


Freak Show

by orphan_account



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: (referenced w/ imagery), Alternate Universe, Circus, Gen, Immortality, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27489196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “In fact, she wasn’t even your childhood sweetheart. Infact, by her reckoning, you must have been at least 20 when you moved in across the road from her, alone, when she was a kid.”Ned winced. Emerson kept talking.“Funny how it didn’t come up until she mentioned how good you looked for a guy that had to be coming on forty. Which incidentally, doesn’t line up with a single thing you’ve told me about your age.”---This AU completely changes like everything about Ned lmao. His backstory is completely different, he's immortal, he's over 100 years old… it's just the most buckwild shit I swear to god...
Relationships: Emerson Cod & Ned
Kudos: 10





	Freak Show

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a helluva lot of writer's block, and even though this doesn't make any sense, it's been sitting in my drive for a while and I wanted to at least post _something_ lately, to ease my dry spell in the eyes of my post history.

“It’s late,” pointed out Emerson Cod as he walked into the little corner diner. 

“I suppose so,” Ned said. He nervously glanced at the clock on the wall and shifted slightly. 

“I spoke to Dead Girl,” Emerson began. 

Ned tensed and didn’t meet the PI’s eyes. “Did you?” he said, in a faux-casual voice, tinny and betraying every bit of the fear he harboured. 

“She wasn’t your first kiss,” Emerson said. 

“…No,” Ned admitted. 

“In fact, she wasn’t even your childhood sweetheart. In fact, by her reckoning, you must have been at least 20 when you moved in across the road from her, alone, when she was a kid.” 

Ned winced. Emerson kept talking. 

“Funny how it didn’t come up until she mentioned how good you looked for a guy that had to be coming on forty. Which incidentally, doesn’t line up with a single thing you’ve told me about your age.”

“No,” Ned agreed, looking down. 

“So how old _are_ you?” Emerson asked. “Cause right now I’m trying to wrap my head around it.”

“26,” Ned answered. 

Emerson raised an eyebrow. “You was 26 when we met,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Ned said. “Um, it’s been 26 for a while. Still, technically 26, depending on how you measure age, which I suppose is really quite a subjective thing--”

“How many years have you been alive? It’s not particularly hard to interpret,” Emerson demanded. 

“I think maybe… a hundred… a-hundred-and-thirty-two?” Ned breathed quickly. 

If Emerson had been holding anything at that point in time, he would have dropped it. He imagined that whatever it hypothetically could have been would have smashed on the floor. But he was holding nothing. He dropped nothing. Nothing smashed. 

“You’re gonna start from the beginning,” Emerson said. “And you’re gonna explain what the hell you mean _132_.”

Ned swallowed. 

“Well, um, I think it must have been 1852… I didn’t really know how the touch-thing worked? Not all that well. Or at least, I didn’t know about the exchange. And, um, my mother died. So, of course, I touched her… but then she tucked me into bed and gave me a kiss goodnight… I didn’t really _know_.”

Emerson flinched at ‘kiss goodnight’. He knew what that meant. But 1852 was a long goddamn time ago, and none of this made any sense. 

“So my father put me in a carriage. Didn’t tell me where I was going. I never saw him again. I think he kind of reckoned my mother’s death was his get-out-of-family-free ticket, you know? Turns out he sent me to a circus. I was part of the freak show for _years_. They had me juggling rotten fruit.”

“Now hang on there,” Emerson said. “You said you killed Dead Girl’s father. How’d you get from here to there?”

“A freak who can bring dead things back to life doesn’t attract good attention. Especially not in those days,” Ned explained. “It took nearly 15 years for me to convince the boss to quit the act. He held onto it for so long ‘cause the crowds it drew… they were pretty big.”

“Are you getting to the point?” Emerson asked. 

“I started aerial pretty late. They tried me on the silks cause I was skinny and tall, but the crowds preferred the women to me. They put me in the hoop -- same thing. Trapeze wasn’t my first choice. I was bad at it. They always had the nets up. But they take them down during the show, you know, so the crowd gets the thrill.”

Emerson took a slow, steadying breath. 

“During my first performance, I fell from pretty high. They said it looked like my neck snapped. One of the women in the audience died. From shock, they thought, but I guess it wasn’t, cause a minute after I fell I got back up again. I was fine. Neck a little sore.”

“You died, didn’t you? And the woman…”

“Yeah,” Ned said. “I don’t think I noticed at the time. In any case, that was when I was 26.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“But how…”

“The last person I knew from when I was, you know, in the circus, had just died. I’d been living across from Charles Charles for a while. I sort of thought ‘why not’. I just did it, didn’t really think. There was a lot of blood. I mean obviously, if you slit your wrists there’s gonna be a lot of blood. But it came so fast, and there was so much. Eventually, everything was just a dull throb. And then nothing. Same deal, you know? Then I came to. Blood’s everywhere, but I’m not bleeding anymore. I walk into the front room, and out the window, Charles Charles is on his back on the lawn.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I didn’t. No idea. Not until then.”

**Author's Note:**

> I guess it's pretty creepy that Ned told Emerson he had a crush on Chuck and that she was his first kiss given the massive age difference of their childhood... that's why I didn't tag Chuck/Ned; cause I imagine in this AU their relationship is platonic and non-romantic. But I suppose it's quite strange and incoherent anyway. It's basically just a weird dream that I had lmao. I imagine though that given the fact he killed her dad and then ran from the town makes him feel pretty bad and fairly protective of her.


End file.
